A statement for ‘Anti-Imperialism Week’ from the Communist Party and Young Workers League on why U.S. workers needed to unite with the anti-imperialist struggle abroad; because it was imperialism that also oppressed and exploited them at home.

‘Communists Call on United Working Class Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism’ from Young Worker. Vol. 4 No. 22. June 27, 1925.

The Workers (Communist) Party has issued an appeal to all workers and poor farmers oppressed by the far flung tentacles of American imperialism to join with Anti-Imperialist the Communists during Week, June 29 to July 4, in protesting against the domination of Wall Street over the subject peoples.

The colonial and semi-colonial peoples of the world have demonstrated that they are no longer defenseless. Revolt against the domination of foreign capitalism flames in China. In Morocco French imperialism has met its master in the gallant Riffian defenders of their native soil. And now the Mexican workers and peasants openly defy America’s Morgan-Rockefeller exploitation. The Soviet Union stands the guiding light for the oppressed peoples of the world, a bulwark of strength to the exploited workers suffering under American imperialism. The victims of Wall Street Imperialism will rally to the call of the Workers (Communist) Party for a united front against the American government’s brutal domination.

The manifesto of the Workers Party declares:

This is Anti-Imperialist Week!

AMERICA’S Independence Day is not to be surrendered to the capitalists and the militaristic freebooters after all.

A new factor has appeared upon the scene: The All-American Anti-Imperialist League-which has answered President Coolidge’s proclamation of “mobilization day” by a counter proclamation declaring the week of June 29, to July 4, to be “Anti-Imperialist Week” thruout America. Representing predominantly national liberation, labor and student organizations of Latin America, the league has issued a call to all anti-imperialist elements to unite in making “Anti-Imperialist Week” a mighty demonstration of international solidarity against American imperialism.

Especially to us-exploited workers of the United States, is the call directed. Let us respond as one man, in the name of the common exploitation that weighs us down.

“The week ending July 4, is Anti- Imperialist Week!”

Hard Lot of the American Workers.

AS our great “national holiday,” the Fourth of July, approaches, we have less and less reason to make it an occasion for glorifying American capitalist rule, in accordance with the proclamations of President Coolidge. The conditions of the working class are far from what might be expected from the fact that in the vaults of American bankers lies more than half of the gold in the world.

Insufficient wages and long hours of toil are the rule in every field; all pretense at maintaining an eight-hour workday has been laid aside. But that is not the worst. Unemployment has again laid its dread hand on the industries of the United States. More than 2,000,000 workers are walking the streets in a vain search of a job which will pay them enuf to buy food and shelter for their families. Moreover, the unemployment roll is roll is swelling. Men who are working today live in constant fear that they will be laid off tomorrow.

This uncertainty is the mark of wage-slavery. It is due to the fact that tho the worker is the backbone of industry, the factory does not belong to him–even after he has given the better part of his life to it. It belongs to the capitalist, who “provides work” only so long as it is profitable for him to do so.

What we are now witnessing is a permanent increase in the army of unemployment.

Big Profits for the Trusts.

THE profits of the bosses are greater than ever. At the beginning of 1925, 81 industrial corporations reported undivided surplus profits of $1,652,057,381. Monopoly profits may be realized because every important industry in the land is dominated by a handful of individuals. There is the oil trust, the steel trust, the copper trust, the electric trust, the sugar trust, the meat trust. All that is left of competition on a large scale is the competition of the workers for jobs. When the workers combine to improve their conditions they are greeted with police clubs. If they initiate a big strike, the militia may be called out against them. Injunctions are issued. Meetings are broken up. Strike leaders are arrested.

A “Business Man’s Government.”

FOR the government is on the side of the bosses.

This means that a handful of monopolists, who control American industry, also control the federal government. The policy of the government is their policy. The power of the government is theirs to utilize as they see fit–now in West Virginia, against the striking coal miners; now in far-off China, against the natives who revolt against foreign profit-intervention. It is they who are behind the scheme for a general mobilization on July 4. The real decision was reached not in Washington, but in in Wall Street.

Wall Street and Foreign Investments.

MOST powerful of all the trusts is the money trust, the narrow ring of bankers with J. P. Morgan at their head, who control the flow of capital to modern large-scale industry and who make up the ruling oligarchy in our country. If the profits of ordinary monopoly are large, those of the important bankers are truly fabulous. Only a few days ago it was officially announced that the First National Bank of New York is on a dividend basis of 25 per cent quarterly, which means that the fortunate holders of bank stock are to receive dividends equal to 100 per cent on their capital each year.

In fact, the capital of the financial kings is increasing so rapidly that they cannot find place in the United States to reinvest all of it.

They cast their eyes abroad, to the so-called backward countries, where raw materials abound, where labor power is dirt cheap and land can be had for next to nothing. Confirmed monopolists, they seek to monopolize the oil of Mexico and Venezuela, the nitrates of Chile, the metals of Bolivia, as well as the virgin investment areas themselves. They even stretch their hands out for Europe, thru the medium of the Dawes plan.

Imperialism, the Final Stage of Capitalism.

THE natives must be “colonialized,” that is, they must be virtually enslaved. Wall Street has the armed might of the United States government at its disposal for this purpose. Many a Yankee soldier has been sent out to Haiti or Central America to fight and die for the National City Bank.

In China today American troops are taking a leading part in the latest outrages against the Chinese people, which have as their purpose the redivision of China among robber imperialists.

This is the capitalism of today. It is imperialism.

Imperialism is the final stage of capitalism, springing out of the soil of capitalism, resting on the system of wage-slavery in the home country and bringing with it new and greater sufferings for the workers.

What Imperialism Means for the American Workers.

Imperialism forces down the standard of living of the workers in the United States, because of the competition with the labor of more backward countries.

It increases the insecurity of the working class family; makes unemployment a permanent plague.

It allows bosses to ignore the demands of the workers by simply shutting down plants and shifting production to some other territory.

It greatly intensifies the class struggle, at the same time opposing the poorly organized workers to a powerful, closely-knit ring of finance-monopolists.

It increases the size and mobility of the military forces to be used against the workers in industrial struggles.

It results in devastating wars–the bloodiest and most tremendous wars the world has ever seen–tearing the workers from their families and sending them to kill and be killed on foreign battlefields for the sake of the money kings.

The Next War.

WAR is one of the regular forms of competition between the great militarized trusts of modern capitalism. The imperialists of the United States, eagerly striving to force open the already “closed door” to the treasure house of China, come into open conflict with the Japanese imperialists and the British imperialists. In making use of the Monroe Doctrine to keep the door closed upon Standard Oil’s domination of the petroleum resources of Latin-America, they clash directly with the British imperialists who also want to monopolize this petroleum for their own purposes. There are a hundred and one points of conflict, all of them leading the way to inevitable war.

The next war is just around the corner.

Wall Street wants war, and wants it soon, because it feels that it is now in a position to annihilate its strongest rivals.

“Preparedness!”

HENCE the great propaganda against the “yellow peril” and for “white supremacy,” in the Pacific. Hence the “friendly” maneuvers of the United States fleet in far eastern waters. Hence the widespread development of military training camps. Hence the drilling and training of workers’ children in the public schools.

Hence President Coolidge’s call for a general mobilization on July 4, the innocent “defense test”–to test the willingness of the American workers to defend Morgan’s investments in Europe, Latin-America and the Far East.

The American workers must answer this call with a loud “No!”

We must refuse to “mobilize” for Morgan’s next war!

Let us mobilize not for Morgan, but against Morgan!

The proclamation of the All-American Anti-Imperialist League points the way.

Trade Unions and Labor Fakers.

THE American trade unions should be the first to take up the vital struggle of the workers against imperialism. Many of them have already shown their determination to do this.

But the bureaucratic officialdom of the trade unions is not anti-imperialist but pro-imperialist. The complacent, $10,000-a-year “labor leaders” are themselves enjoying the fruits of imperialism; the extravagant profits wrung from the toil of colonial and semi-colonial peoples, enable the imperialists to share a small portion with the so-called aristocracy of labor, a form of bribe-money of which the labor fakers are the first to take ad- vantage.

These “labor leaders” do not live the lives of workers. They do not represent the real interests of the workers. They interfere with every attempt to strengthen the unions by amalgamation.

They sabotage the movement for the formation of a labor party to give political expression to the workers as against the political parties of the bosses.

They lead the workers to the slaughter whenever a new imperialist profit-war breaks out!

It is from the rank and file of the trade unions that the struggle against capitalist exploitation gets its urge.

Allies Against Wall Street.

THE American workers have one staunch ally, Soviet Russia, which has already vanquished capitalist rule over one-sixth of the surface of the earth and which is bound by ties of revolutionary solidarity to the working class movement everywhere.

Another trustworthy ally is the oppressed colonial and semi-colonial peoples, the victims of American imperialism in Hawaii and in the Philippines, in Porto Rico, in Hayti and Santo Domingo, in Cuba, in Mexico, in Central America, in Venezuela, in Bolivia and Peru.

These people pay toll to Wall Street no less than we. They are the worst exploited of all. And they are struggling to be free.

Oppressed Peoples Fighting Our Enemy.

THEY are fighting our enemy, American capitalism, on “the foreign front.”

The paid press agents of imperialism tell us that the United States has entered these territories “for their own good,” that American rule is beneficial, that the natives like it and that “only a discordant minority” opposes. This is the hypocritical language of imperialism, the same that is used by the British imperialists in India, and by profit-seeking imperialists everywhere.

What are the facts?

Filipinos and Latin-Americans Want Freedom.

THE Filipino voters have time after time demanded immediate independence from the United States. Both houses of the Filipino congress are completely in the hands of the independence party led by Manuel Quezon, who has just scored another overwhelming victory at the polls.

Porto Rico has already forced the recall of one American governor-general and, against the open hostility of American officials, has kept in office a legislature elected on a platform of national independence.

The people of Haiti and Central America have used every means to free themselves.

Thruout Latin-America, American rule is maintained only by corruption, bulldozing and force of arms.

American Workers Facing Test.

THE separate struggles for national liberation have now been unified, thru the formation of the All-American Anti-Imperialist League, which the American workers have also been invited to join.

It has put the workers of the United States before the test which is far more direct than President Coolidge’s “defense test.” With United States troops actually occupying foreign territory, the supreme test of the sincerity of every class conscious worker in this country is militant opposition to American imperialism,

Celebrate Anti-Imperialist Week. THE week of June 29 to July 4, will be Anti-Imperialist Week thruout the American continent. There is to be a solid week of protest and propaganda in every Latin-American country.

“Anti-Imperialist Week” must be celebrated still more widely, still more militantly in the United States itself, by American workers.

The revolutionary working class must be the champion of every oppressed people. Our dead Comrade Lenin emphasized time and again that no people can be free that oppresses others. The struggle of the American workers and that of the oppressed nations is one.

The capitalist realize this full well, as is shown by their treatment of the brave soldiers, Paul Crouch and Walter Trumbull, who dared to form a Communist organization in the imperial domain of Hawaii.

Let us show that we realize it too!

Workers Party Takes Up Call.

THE Workers (Communist) Party of America takes up the call of the All-American Anti-Imperialist League in a spirit of comradeship and revolutionary duty. Our party will do everything in its power to make Anti-Imperialist week a real mobilization of anti-imperialist forces in this country. Every unit of the party will take part in it. Our publications will issue special “anti-imperialist” editions.

To all working class organizations, we appeal to unite with us in join mass meetings and demonstrations during Anti-Imperialist Week.

WE invite the trade unions, the socialist party, the I.W.W., the proletarian party and all farmer-labor parties to present a common front with us on this issue.

We invite Negroes and representatives of Negro organizations to speak with us from the same platform.

And especially do we extend our fraternal appeal to all members of the Chinese Kuo Min Tang Party and to Filipinos and Latin-Americans in the United States.

June 29 to July 4, is Anti-Imperialist Week.

A united struggle of the working class with all the oppressed peoples of the world will put an end to capitalist rule and usher in the dawn of a society free from oppression of class by class or race by race or nation by nation.

We call upon the American workers to demand:

Unconditional independence for the Philippines, Hawaii, and Porto Rico! Withdrawal of all American military and naval forces from China! Withdrawal of all American and military forces from Latin-America! Hands off Mexico!

Down with the Dawes plan, Wall Street’s scheme for enslaving American and European workers alike!

Equal rights for rights for Negroes with whites!

Unconditional release for Crouch and Trumbull, victims of American imperialism!

Enter the American political struggle as a class and form a labor party!

WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA, William Z. Foster, Chairman, C. E. Ruthenberg, Executive Sec., YOUNG WORKERS LEAGUE OF AMERICA, John Williamson, Sec.

The Young Worker was produced by the Young Workers League of America beginning in 1922. The name of the Workers Party youth league followed the name of the adult party, changing to the Young Workers (Communist) League when the Workers Party became the Workers (Communist) Party in 1926. The journal was published monthly in Chicago and continued until 1927. Editors included Oliver Carlson, Martin Abern, Max Schachtman, Nat Kaplan, and Harry Gannes.

For PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/youngworker/v04n22-jun-27-1925-yw.pdf